Russia will limit the sale of abortion drugs to increase the birth rate

Russian authorities are preparing new restrictions on the trade in abortion drugs to stem the decline in the birth rate, which this year could be the lowest in the country’s recent history.

The Ministry of Health is in favor of limiting the sale of drugs for medical abortion and tightening control over them in pharmacies and hospitals, said the head of the department Mikhail Murashko after Monday’s meeting of the Presidium of the United Russia faction.

According to him, such drugs should be transferred to subject-quantity accounting (PKU) – by analogy with narcotics or psychotropic substances. The PKU regime provides for the registration of all transactions with drug stocks, as well as permanent determination of their quantity.

According to Muraszka, the tightening of regulations on the sale of abortion drugs is to be completed before the end of the year. He explained that this was discussed in the light of demographic issues (quotes from Interfax).

According to Rosstat, in 2022 the number of children born in Russia decreased by 96,000. to 1.306 million and became the lowest since 2001. Throughout the country, the birth rate turned out to be 1.5 times lower than the death rate (1.905 million), while in some regions the difference turned out to be twice as large.

In the period January-May 2023, the number of child births fell by another 11.5 thousand, to 511.7 thousand, and the relative birth rate – 8.5 children per 1,000 people – reached the “bottom” since the late 1990s. I although the mortality rate also decreased – by 15%, to 748.4 thousand. people in five months, it was not enough to compensate for the decline in births. As a result: as a result of a natural decline, Russia lost another 236.7 thousand jobs in January-May. people.

And this is only the beginning: the mobilization and death of tens of thousands of men in war will inevitably bring about a deterioration of the demographic situation – the birth rate will decrease by another 5-10% and will be the lowest since the beginning of the 19th century, believes demographer Alexei Raksha.

“At the beginning. ”, predicts Raksha.

Demographically, Russia is “in a very difficult situation”, said the president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, in May. “Demography is where we haven’t succeeded yet,” he admitted. According to Peskov, the authorities have taken a number of measures to “encourage the population to increase the birth rate”, but so far “they have not produced the desired result.”